Pictures of sea anchor attachments?

[Franziska]

Hi,

as I have just got the line for my seaanchor I start thinking about how to attach it in the best way and most chafeproof.

Chafeprotection seems more vital than on a normal anchor.
Old firehose is a great protector but how do I then use a cleat or eyepad?

Better wrap around the beams?

Or through two biiiiiig padeye just above the waterline (essentially lifting the bows to some degree rather than pulling them under)?

How about a few feet of highly chafe resistant Dyneema before the loooong Nylon bridle starts?
Dyneema with eyespliced loops on both ends.
One side overlapped on cleat other side joining into an eyesplice loop on the Nylon bridle.
Any thoughts?

Those of you who have done it, how do you do it?
Pictures please.

Looking forward to the crowds thoughts, thanks,

Franziska

[44'cruisingcat]

I built heavy sea anchor bridle attachment points into my forebeam.


100 5611 - Cruisers & Sailing Photo Gallery


Many layers of unidirectional glass. I use large bow shackles and hard eye splices. There should be no issues with chafe.

[FSMike]

Bear in mind that if you ever have to use it you may have to adjust the length quite a bit to ensure that the parachute is riding in the proper part of the wave so as to avoid pulling out.
You have to allow for this in your setup, so a "few feet of Dyneema" may need to be more than a few.
Other than that using Dyneema near the potential chafe points sounds like an excellent idea. I've never had to use mine so I am not speaking from experience here.

[belizesailor]

OP: You mention bows & beams so I assume you are attaching to a cat. By "wrapping around the beams", do you mean the forward beam? If so, bad idea, the forward beam is not designed to take heavy lateral loads.

I've seen cats set up with special built, and very heavy duty, attachment points on the bows. These have to be very strong, and properly installed/backed in a very strong section of bow to handle sea anchor loads. Must have a fair lead also to avoid chafe.

IIRC there is a thread on here somewhere discussing exactly this subject with examples from a cat owner who has experience riding out severe weather on a sea anchor. Worth a search.

[Wanderlust]

That may have been my boat. The previous owner deployed his sea anchor in a crossing from Australia to NZ back in 2008. He said the winds were 40-45 knots, gusting 50 with breaking 6M seas. The 2 crew were very seasick so he was virtually singlehanding. I remember participating in some thread about it here a year or two ago.

The previous owner wrote an excellent article for Multihull World at the time. Coincidentally to your enquiry, Para Anchors Australia republished that article on their website last month. You can find it on their site under Blog. There may be some concession to marketing in some of the wording. From what I have heard the deployment was primarily for the comfort and wellbeing of the his badly seasick crew. When the winds abated they were transferred to a cruise ship, and he continued on alone.

As to your original question about chafe, I have that sea anchor and can see the braided nylon rode is still in good condition. However there is some wear on the 12mm stainless shackle where the rode attaches to the anchor. I assume he used the original Lagoon cleats at each bow. They don't appear to have any structural improvements over standard.

[belizesailor]

IIRC the boat I'm thinking of was an FP and he had installed big custom fabricated attachment points and fairleads on each bow.

[wrwakefield]

Originally Posted by Franziska

Hi,

as I have just got the line for my seaanchor I start thinking about how to attach it in the best way and most chafeproof.

Chafeprotection seems more vital than on a normal anchor.
Old firehose is a great protector but how do I then use a cleat or eyepad?

Better wrap around the beams?

Or through two biiiiiig padeye just above the waterline (essentially lifting the bows to some degree rather than pulling them under)?

How about a few feet of highly chafe resistant Dyneema before the loooong Nylon bridle starts?
Dyneema with eyespliced loops on both ends.
One side overlapped on cleat other side joining into an eyesplice loop on the Nylon bridle.
Any thoughts?

Those of you who have done it, how do you do it?
Pictures please.

Looking forward to the crowds thoughts, thanks,

Franziska

Hi Franziska,

I have no experience deploying a sea anchor from a catamaran, but can share my experiences deploying from fiberglass monohulls.

I have yet to deploy a sea anchor in storm conditions as I have been lucky enough to achieve the desired balanced hove-to state on those 2 occasions... However, practicing sea anchor deployment and retrieval on 2 different boats over the years I came to the conclusion that it made the most sense to me to attach the sea anchor rode swivel to my anchor chain about 3+ meters above the main bower. I then deploy the sea anchor and let out ~15 meters of chain as though I was preparing to anchor. Then I set up my usual double snubber (which is very chafe resistant and easily replaceable) on the anchor chain rode.

The net result is the sea anchor rode swivel [600 ft of 1 1/8" 12 plait nylon with a 24ft Paratech sea anchor on my current boat] is connected to the main anchor chain for chafe resistance (among other things.) The deployed main bower and chain act like a kellet to further dampen the sea anchor loads, along with the double anchor chain snubber [i.e., no loads on the windlass as long as the snubber is intact...]

This also allows for minor length/ sea anchor depth adjustments using the anchor windlass. Of course, this is all assuming deep water...

If you are worried about the main bower fouling the sea anchor rode/swivel, you could always detach the chain from the anchor and then attach the sea anchor swivel to the end of the anchor chain... but I like the kellet weight of the anchor in my set-up...

This all sounds fiddly, but really isn't [at least in practice in force 8 conditions...] However, as I mentioned above, I have been lucky enough to never have deployed my sea anchor in critical conditions.

In case this is helpful.

Cheers!

[44'cruisingcat]

Originally Posted by 44'cruisingcat

I built heavy sea anchor bridle attachment points into my forebeam.


100 5611 - Cruisers & Sailing Photo Gallery


Many layers of unidirectional glass. I use large bow shackles and hard eye splices. There should be no issues with chafe.

I should also have mentioned that I heavily reinforced the forebeam installation when I was building it.

Many production boat forebeams might not be able to cope with sea anchor loads.

[thinwater]

OP: Please post pictures of your bows; that might help with suggestions.

[mikereed100]

Franziska,

We use large u-bolts through the bows, which eliminates chafe. We have these mounted about one foot below deck level and have reinforced the bows with carbon and epoxy. I considered placing them just above the waterline, but this would make them impossible to access underway. We use the same u-bolts for our anchor bridle, swapping the anchor bridle for the parachute bridle when on passage. We use dyneema soft shackles to attach the bridles to the u-bolts. In this photo you can see the u-bolts just below the scaffolding:


If you have flat decks and pointy bows you might want to consider something like this:

[Franziska]

Hi everybody,good info so far.Thanks.

Here my bows. The tricky part is, that the cleats are on the outside.

Guess I will not use the lipclamps then, but install heavy duty fairleads to guide the Dyneema leads through instead.

Keep the thoughts coming....

Cheerio Franziska

[Franziska]

@Mike

Could you repost the first image please?
Thanks.

I tend to use the deckcleats with heavy fairleads where the lip clamps are located now.
Leader from dyneema with firehose where it passes the deck.

Still not sure on the adjustability system.

Thanks for your thoughts so far everybody.

Sent from my C6603 using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app

[thinwater]

You could have a rope-cutter like this....

The point is to look all-around. Boats jump a lot in storms.

[Franziska]

Uhhh.That's not good.
Surely will mount different.No lipclamps and proper fairleads instead.
Clearly no chafe is the prime target!

Sent from my C6603 using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app